 Christopher Little is on trial in the murders of Paula Menendez (left) and Julie Crocker (right). (SUN MEDIA)
|
Paula Menendez was not a woman left in turmoil after the separation from her husband -- she was "a catch" and she knew it as she excitedly crept toward a future she would never face, a Newmarket courtroom heard yesterday.
And Julie Crocker was not willing to mend the relationship she once had with her estranged husband, Christopher Little, now on trial for double murder.
It was this latter realization, Crown attorney Douglas Kasko argued during his closing address, that marked "the end" of Little's dreams and the beginning of his plot to kill his wife.
He would stage it as murder-suicide executed at the hands of a woman who was simply an innocent bystander to a love triangle, the Crown said.
Menendez's sisters, the older of whom marked a birthday yesterday, smiled, held back tears and nodded as Kasko connected the dots as he saw them at the end of the two-month trial.
"The end of his dream. The end of reuniting with his wife," Kasko said of motive after detailing the lengths to which Little, 38, went to reconcile with his cheating wife, all the while exhibiting "stalking" behaviour in his quest to catch her red-handed.
"Who else would have a motive, but for him, to kill Julie Crocker?"
So then why Menendez?
Because, Kasko argued, Little wanted her estranged husband, radio sportscaster Rick Ralph, who began a relationship with Crocker, to suffer.
SHATTERED MARRIAGE
Because he needed to make it look like someone else killed his 33-year-old wife and because, Kasko argued, he "mistakenly" believed 34-year-old Menendez felt the same about her shattered marriage as Little felt about his, when in fact she and Ralph had an amicable split.
Little had purchased a spray to detect semen on Crocker's clothes, he had confronted her and Ralph at a hotel after tracking her there through a GPS device he installed in her car, and he had walked in on them in bed during an unannounced visit at their home following their split.
He had also sought counselling -- not because he wanted to get over Crocker, but because he wanted help getting her back, Kasko argued.
On Wednesday, defence lawyer John Rosen closed his arguments by suggesting that Menendez slashed Crocker's throat in a jealous fit over the affair between her and Ralph before hanging herself in Crocker's garage.
Kasko used largely circumstantial evidence to paint Menendez as a victim of murder, not a suicidal killer.
Since splitting from Ralph four months before she was found dead Feb. 12, 2007, Menendez was excited about dating and opening a physiotherapy clinic outside the home they once shared, Kasko said.
In the hours before she died, Menendez spoke with her sister on the phone about plans for the coming days, about how she wanted a call as soon as her sister's baby was born, and told a friend she would spend the night doing laundry.
On the cold February night that Rosen argued Menendez left her home without her vehicle and went to Crocker and Little's Larkin Ave. house, Menendez was found without any socks and with blood on the back of her boot -- proof, Kasko suggested, that she did not leave her home alive, that someone with bloody hands put that boot on for her.
He pointed to the cuts and bruises found about Menendez's body during her autopsy.
STRUCK HER HEAD
"These bruises are consistent with her being attacked from behind, falling to her knees and striking her head on an object," Kasko said.
In her diary, Menendez wrote about moving on, about dating.
"Nowhere in that journal will you find the name Julie Crocker," Kasko said.
The jury is to be instructed by the judge today before beginning deliberations.
TAMARA.CHERRY@SUNMEDIA.CA
